Senate panel adopts school finance reform bill

Legislation lacks policy concepts embraced by House committee

Kansas Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, left, a Nickerson Republican, confers with Senate President Susan Wagle, right, a Wichita Republican, in a hallway at the back of the Senate chamber during its session Tuesday. Senate GOP leaders pushed through their version of a school funding plan aimed at complying with a Kansas Supreme Court mandate to boost aid to poor school districts.

The Senate's budget committee wrapped hours of debate Tuesday night by approving a bill responding to Kansas Supreme Court orders to correct unconstitutional inequities in public school funding that carried an annual price tag of $129 million.

Members of the Senate Ways and Means Committee narrowly defeated a radical proposal to take the entire amount from public school district reserve accounts before advancing a plan largely embraced by the chamber's Republican leadership. The House, meanwhile, worked the day to draft its own strategy for school funding adjustments.

"I wanted to get a work product out for the whole body to consider," said Sen. Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican and chairman of the budget-writing committee. "This is a huge subject. There are a lot of moving parts and lots of variables."

Democrats in the Legislature have advocated simple payment of $129 million to K-12 schools, while many Republicans sought to link the inevitable spending bill to controversial education policy reforms. The proposals ranged from tax breaks for private school students, expansion of state-funding charter schools and formation of a study group to identify education cost savings.

Gov. Sam Brownback and the Legislature have wrestled with options for constitutionally funding schools since the Supreme Court's ruling was released March 7. The court's deadline for resolving the immediate shortfall is July 1, and lawmakers are attempting to wrap their work by Friday.

In the Senate, the budget committee's nine Republicans endorsed a bill combining about $50 million in state school aid cuts with addition of $9.5 million in per-pupil base state support. It assumes a portion of districts would agree to take advantage of new authority to raise property taxes for education by $14 million. Most increases in these local-option budgets above the current cap would have to be approved through a public ballot measure.

The bill would draw upon a $24 million from a federal tax windfall, $5 million in the attorney general's litigation fund, $3.5 million set aside for construction of a crime laboratory at Washburn University and $2 million in the state's problem gambling fund.

"I just think we're moving it from Pete's pot to Paul's pot," said Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topekan and ranking Democrat on the budget committee. "We need to be looking at new money. I don't think the court is going to be very impressed with accounting tricks."

There would be financial winners and significant losers under the Senate bill.

Overall, the Wichita district would gain $14.5 million over current appropriations. Other top gainers: Kansas City, Kan., $9.7 million; Olathe, $8 million; Topeka, $4.8 million; and Dodge City, $2.5 million. In some instances, the cash would have to be used to reduce the local school mill levy rather than infuse resources into classrooms.

On the other side of the coin, the Lawrence school district would lose $2 million and the Elkhart district would surrender $1.2 million.

"We live in a state that offers school choice and it would be a huge mistake to cut funding to virtual schools," said Jerald Rash, principal of Kansas Connections Academy in Elkhart "A virtual school cut of any amount would be devastating to many Kansas kids."

After Rash and a cadre of others testified against a proposed 50 percent reduction in virtual school aid, the Senate committee rolled back the original $14 million cut to less than $4 million. If that position survives the legislative gauntlet, the hit on Lawrence and other districts involved in virtual educational instruction would be greatly reduced.

Kelly's amendment to earmark $5.2 million for a 1.5 percent raise for state employees -- an idea initially proposed by Brownback -- was rejected by the Senate panel. The committee's two Democrats, Kelly and Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, were alone in backing that amendment.

Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City, unsuccessfully pressed colleagues on the committee to support an amendment to secure the $129 million by sweeping money from a dozen reserve accounts operated by local school districts.

The committee adopted a separate Abrams amendment to create for parents sending children to private schools a break on property taxes paid to operate public schools. His plan offers a $1,000 per child tax cut, with a maximum benefit of $2,500 per family.

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So, let me get this straight, most of us will have to pay higher property taxes, because we are going to give all private and home school children parents a $1,000-2500 tax exemption? So under Brownback and the Republican legislators we give many business zero state taxes, plus the freebie to private/home schooled parents? So where does that leave the majority of we Kansans- paying out our noses for these special interest groups. Yes, like that is fair. Geesh... do they think the rest of us can't figure out the inequality of that!

The smoke and mirrors game continues for education funding. Allocate $129 million to adequately and equitably fund Kansas education and fulfill your responsibility to comply with the constitution.

"I just think we're moving it from Pete's pot to Paul's pot," said Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topekan and ranking Democrat on the budget committee. "We need to be looking at new money. I don't think the court is going to be very impressed with accounting tricks."

It's against my sincerely held religious beliefs to pay for the religious indoctrination of children under the guise of "education", given that I don't hold the same religious beliefs as those doing the indoctrinations.

Therefore, I should be exempt from this tax law and should not have to pay an increase in property taxes due to the Kansas legislators insistence on shoving their extreme-right-wing take on Christianity down my throat. My tax money shouldn't be going to religion unless I approve it. That *DEFINITELY* includes non-accredited home schools.

Failure to address the fundamental inequities of forcing people to pay for public schools their own children do not use is a very special form of taxpayer abuse.

Yes, the truly wealthy can pay their tax-bill and send their children wherever they want, even boarding school in Switzerland, if they so choose. But what of those of more modest means, even the truly needy? Are their children to be held hostage to a system that continues to decline, year after year, with no opportunity whatsoever for any other educational options?

Nevermind the wealthy, how on Earth is it "fair" to trap the poorest families within uncompetitive (or even downright awful) public schools?

Free enterprise holds the promise of widespread improvement through open competition. Private schools have decade after decade of proven success at the delivery of genuine excellence, and they routinely do so at less overall expense than their public school contemporaries. A much-smaller percentage of administrators-to-teachers, lower salaries & benefits, and aggressive operational thrift are most often found at the heart of their efficiency.

Moreover, how is it fair to the taxpayers (who foot the bill for all of our public education system) to hold public schools immune to the salutary benefits of open competition across the entire market?

Are we really doing our best for the next generation? Or, by preventing that open competition, are we merely sheltering the "self-esteem" of teachers and administrators?

Or, are we allowing the KNEA to rationalize the dues they collect from their members, with only lip-service for students' ultimate success?

Regardless, the only real winners in the ongoing battles over education funding are the lawyers who get to run up their billable hours at taxpayers' expense, some of whom have spent entire careers in this particular pursuit.

MEANWHILE, for 47 years now, Kansas education funding has been hostage to an unending tug-of-war of Legislators in Topeka versus the KS Board of Education & KNEA via lawyers in the KS Supreme Court. By extension, this victimizes real students in classrooms from Shawnee Mission to Elkhart, from Goodland to Cherokee.

Under our State Constitution, all matters of funding and financing are to originate, be determined and set by the Legislature, p-e-r-i-o-d. The KS Constitution provides no exceptions for public education or any other category.

Thus, ALL of the repeated legal contests over education funding present the fundamental conflict of one taxpayer-funded entity filing suit against another taxpayer-funded entity, thus adding to taxpayers' burdens to pay for all the legal expenses for both sides, then mandating that the same taxpayers pay even more once a verdict is rendered. Can you say "Lose, lose, LOSE"?

Over those past 5 decades, it is now clear by all objective measures that although the NEA has succeeded in wrangling more and more money, year after year after year, actual results continue their sad decline, on so many levels, in so many ways.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting the results to change."

We should note that Bills have been proposed and filed, in this year's Session and past, to prohibit the boneheaded spectacle of one branch of our government suing another (all at taxpayers' expense) because the funding provided by the peoples' elected representatives doesn't allow educators another raise, another obscure new special hire, the next new building or the latest fad program (see: Common Core State Standards).

Bills to stop this internecine bloodletting have always languished in Committee, and this year is sadly no exception.

Thus our Legislators also share the blame, for not asserting their proper role to represent their constituents. They have failed to take the due diligence in all deliberate process to make the tough decisions as to spending of the peoples' purse and MAKE THEM STICK.

Our Legislators must stop this never-ending game of legislative/judicial ping-pong. It surrenders their own proper authority to the whims of unelected Judges and the vagaries of judicial process.

Our Legislators must cease and desist the charade of scapegoating the Supreme Court for everyone's property tax increases as education outcomes continue to decline. Elected representation includes certain duties, and control of the peoples' purse is among the foremost.

For their part, Kansas educators, teachers and administrators alike, must fully accept their own responsibilities, amongst which is the need to strive for excellence within the constraints of whatever funding is made available by those elected to make that determination.

If those limits fail to reach to their satisfaction, they have the same right to petition their own elected representatives as anyone else. That, or leave public service and pursue their dreams elsewhere, in the private sector.

Kansas residents live within finite household budgets, and our generosity as taxpayers must not be distorted in delusions of bottomless wells. It matters not whether the perpetrators of the distortions is found under the dome in Topeka or in the halls and classrooms of our schools. Education funding at the gunpoint of Judicial mandates must end.